Biden is poised to expand Bears Ears and Grand Staircase monuments The real question is by how much? msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
| Updated: 10:52 p.m.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, President Joe Biden’s historic Cabinet pick, has been at her new post only since mid-March, but she’s already making good on her promise to visit Utah ahead of issuing recommendations on national monuments in the state.
Haaland will be in the Beehive State next week, the Interior Department announced Wednesday, and will journey as well to New Mexico, which she previously represented as a Democratic member of the U.S. House.
During her Senate confirmation hearing in February, Haaland vowed to take the trip as part of her review of the boundaries for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante national monuments in southern Utah, which were reduced by more than 2 million total acres in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump.
On Monday, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and the other members of Utahâs congressional delegation sent a letter to President Joe Biden regarding the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.
âWe call upon you, and your administration, to support and engage in finding a long-term legislative solution and stop the vacillation of national monument boundaries in Utah,â the letter reads. âWe remain prepared to work in good faith and hope you do as well.â
In their letter, the Utah representatives asked the Biden administration for their assistance in finding a permanent legislative solution to these boundary disputes and statutory protections to prevent abuses of the Antiquities Act.
A Sacred Place Undone by Trump Must Be Saved by Biden
Bears Ears is one of the nation’s most compelling and mysterious landscapes and a place of worship for Native Americans.
By David Roberts
Mr. Roberts is the author of “The Bears Ears: A Human History of America’s Most Endangered Wilderness
,” published this week.
Feb. 26, 2021
Valley of the Gods at the Bears Ears National Monument, in Utah.Credit.Sumiko Scott/Moment, via Getty Images
The American West embraces more than its share of spectacular landscapes. But there’s nothing else quite like the vast swath of canyons, mesas, sandstone spires and arches that stretches some 80 miles from north to south in the southeast corner of Utah, ranging in altitude from sagebrush flats to pinyon-and-juniper forests and old growth stands of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir.
From first Native American leader to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante boundary changes.
(Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune File Photo) Looking south beyond the Colorado River, is the northern most boundary of the Bears Ears region in southeastern Utah. EcoFlight flew journalists, tribal people and activists over the northern portion of the proposed 1.9 million acre site in April 2018 in an effort to push for permanent protection from impacts caused by resource extraction and high-impact public use. President Barack Obama designated a 1.9 million acre monument only to have it significantly downsized by President Donald Trump. The monument boundaries, along with the Grand-Staircase Escalante national monument, are under review by the administration of President Joe Biden.